The pads come on and the poppin' starts

The first day of August saw the Presbyterian College football team hold its fifth practice of preseason camp and the first in full pads on warm Tuesday afternoon on the Pondo.

The Blue Hose now sit 30 days away from the opening kickoff of the season.

“The attitude and the energy are the best that they have been,” head coach Tommy Spangler said after practice. “The execution isn’t quite there yet but we’ve only been five days and it just turned August so we still have time. We need a sense of urgency though to clean up the execution and the fundamental assignments so we can learn to play the game 11-on-11 with some consistency.”

The Blue Hose worked in full pads and saw real contact for the first time in fall camp on a sunny afternoon in Clinton. The team continues to work on being sound fundamentally in the early days of camp. The pads hit pads for the first time with 11-on-11 action at a couple points during the workout.

“Today, we tried to emphasize that we have got to be a physical football team,” said Spangler. “We hit a little bit and did a couple of drills early in practice to focus on being physical. We aren’t there yet but the things that you emphasize are the things you tend to get better at.”

PC returns to the field for its sixth straight practice to start the preseason on Wednesday, before taking Thursday off for summer exams. They will then practice in the afternoon for the final time on Friday, before holding their first scrimmage on Saturday.

“Six straight days is tough. The challenge when you go six straight days is that it is a grind. If you practice in the morning, you spend the morning in practice and then the afternoon in meetings and that in itself is a grind. And it’s a grind just as much mentally as it is physically.

“Summer conditioning and the things you do in summer conditioning is not exactly football. The things that you do when you are out here playing football make some muscles sore that you don’t think you have. You break down a little bit as you go but we just can’t do so to the point that we aren’t getting quality work. As long as the attitude and the mental focus are there then we are ok. You just have to show the mental toughness that it takes because of the grind of it.”

The season opener against Wake Forest is now just a month away on August 31 in Winston-Salem, N.C.